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The Nightmare Of Being With The Wrong Filipina (Part 2 of 5)

Yes, people in this country do survive on a dollar a day and I have gone through that myself.

To give you an idea of what kind of change we went through, there were occasions when our meals consisted purely of rice and soy sauce.

And no, poverty did not make any of the other hardcore poor any less decent people. Despite the fact that I used to earn $1,500 per day in Malaysia as an IT consultant I think I coped with the lack of money better than Gidget. The reason I say this is because when we
reached the lowest point of our lives, she really kicked me below the belt by saying this to me, “You are a foreigner and you cannot work here in the Philippines and you need me to feed you”. now, I can accept the statement as being a fact but what I found difficult to accept was the fact that I thought we were a couple and we were suppose to go through thick and thin together.

If I could accept the fact that I gave up a better standard of living just to be with this Filipina, wouldn’t that be a strength and value that she should
treasure?

Isn’t a relationship about making sacrifices and meeting challenges together hand in hand?

I think she wanted to get rid of me because I represented one less mouth to feed.

That was when I made a resolve to prove this person otherwise. I pleaded with this Filipina to give me some time. We still had a laptop and internet connection, but I was only allowed by Gidget to use it when her kids were not using it.

To avoid any clashes, I used to wait until the kids went to school during the daytime and at night until
they fell asleep before I used the laptop.

What I tried to do was to look for ways to make money from the internet. So I sat in one corner of the house alone and surfed until dawn. I think Gidget really doubted if I could stand by myself and make any sort of income from the internet. Maybe she forgot or took lightly the fact that I was educated in the UK and majored in both Law and Management, also my IT skills came from working in this line for a decade.

It took me a week to find a way and took me several more weeks to master that opportunity. I
did make some money but at the same time, I was also conned of a couple of thousand dollars worth of freelancing work that I did on the internet.

Just when I felt like I started to get an even break, I crashed again. It can be quite demoralizing. But later on reflection I just took it as another lesson in life and grew wiser.

As the money trickled in, Gidget actually did become more accommodating. I think it was during this time that I would regard as the happiest time that I had with her.

There was give and take in the relationship. And while I was doing my work, I could see her from the corner of my eye knitting away. My heart felt
good, because it seemed that we were now a proper family, working together and it wasn’t just a one way street. What I mean was, I saw that she was trying to change. Even though, we didn’t have much, I was really glad and happy too.

I said to myself that maybe my patience and sacrifice had finally paid off.

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